This blog contains lessons learned by me through the process of mapping for Single Player games, primarily, Half Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead (yes Left 4 Dead can be considered a single player game).
This blog's focus is on the player experience. To hell with the nuts and bolts of the level editor, the entities, models and brushes. This blog is about coming up with a final result when it's all put together.
How does the player feel about the experience?

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

A Feeling must be earned...

I base my maps on how I want the player to feel. I have ideas of huge revelations to the player, moment of intense emotions like fear, elation, power, revulsion, relief etc...

While I may never manage to actually get a player to feel these intense emotions I think if you aim for them youre on the right track.

What I've learned is that these feelings cant be achieved through quick scenarios, they must be earned through the map sections prior to that moment.

A stressed out player (who is having fun being stressed, hopefully) is much more likely to succumb to these feelings.

If your map is too easy, the player never feels in danger and therefore never emotionally invests in the game experience.

Bottom line... Im learning why all those twists and turns along the way are so necessary... its all about building up to these big moments.

About Me

It's always amazing to me how the online mapping community works for HL2 related games. People post screenshots and talk about the maps they're working on. Finally they release them only for their map to be crucified by the various reviewing sites most of the time..
I think the problem is that while you can learn all there is to know about the mapping editor software, you need to really explore and test the hell out of the gameplay with other people. As a lone mapper you are not capable of designing, building then testing your SP maps effectively because you know exactly what is coming round the corner at any given moment...
Also there seems to be very little information shared about good gameplay vs bad. People seem to just assume that if someone has some skill they will suddenly know all these gameplay elements automatically. Gameplay is always something that is drastically overlooked when designing new maps.
So in my frustration I decided to write blogs that focus entirely on gameplay.